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The Netherlands

We visited Nijmegen, The Netherlands to attend the thesis defense and doctorate ceremony of my Sister, Mirrin. In short, she studied wound infections in an Intensive Care, find her study here. It’s a conclusion of a 10~13 year study, I needed a dictionary (long live the Kindle) to plow through the document. I am incredibly proud of her and wish her good luck with her next step!

Update 25 aug 9AM: E-Mail from the product manager. They apologised: Tone tone-of-voice of their earlier mails do not fit their profile and will be evaluated, cases like mine will get higher priority in the future. My calling minutes will be compensated and I am still getting (some) interest over my aborted-savings. Happy!

Update 23 aug 21pm: Got an email reply (my first inline reply e-mail!) from Moneyou customer service that my account is manually closed. Eagerly checking if this is the case but it looks good!

Update 22 aug 21pm: Got a response from the productmanager of the ‘savings’ department! He mentioned both the CEO of Moneyou and Head of Channel Management at ABN AMRO took (internal) action to get this matter solved. Right now it seems that they escalated and will close my account by hand before the 24th of August. Looks good! MoneYou once this is over and satisfactory, I’m always open to give feedback if there is a retrospect!

Update 22 aug 8am: 3 days later, no sign from Moneyou yet.

I put some savings on a bank called Moneyou. If you are considering starting an account I wouldn’t recommend it.

TL;DR: They asked me to close my account, which I couldn’t, but they don’t do it for me. I want my money.

My horror story started in the middle of July. I moved to China so I updated the admin panel in the moneyou, it turned out to be a ‘honeypot’. They allowed me to enter my adres without any warning but I got the following email the next day:

15 july: “Due to your moving abroad we’d like to ask you to cancel your savings account within 7 workdays. The reason is that we only service customers who are living in The Netherlands. A moving abroad means that the moneyou account has to be cancelled”

By just arriving in a new country and looking for a house, a message from your bank that you have to stop your account is just terrible timing, but their good right. So I logged into my panel and tried to stop my deposit. This didn’t work, and this started my horror story. I then had to explain my case 6+ times to different service employees. They all asked the same questions and came with the same solution, that I should try a different browser etc. When I finally got to the point that all things were tried, they told me to email a screenshot of my broken panel, so I thought we were making progress. Unfortunately, over the past six weeks I have send eight emails and never got any in-thread reply from them.

So I kept on calling. Keep explaining my problems, try to escalate. At one point I managed to talk to a manager and he asked if I wanted a coupon for an e-commerce site. This lack of customer perception is just stunning, I told him I want an written explanation of the problem and a due date to solve this, he did:

Roughly translated: “here is the confirmation on the 5th of august we received your email and we are updating you on the status. The processing takes more time, we ask your understanding and are aiming to solve your problem by 19th of august.”

I think it’s fair that I am past my patience at this point. We are one month further in the process which equals 20 working days of 8 hours. You tell me that in 160 hours, one couldn’t escalate this to a manager with the proper rights to close my account? The problem with Moneyou service desk is that I keep having to explain my problem from the beginning. If properly setup, I should get a name and conversations would progress. I made the mistake of checking how long I have been calling with Moneyou:

So, it’s the 19th Moneyou. Where is my own money, Moneyou?! I have been on the phone with your ‘servicedesk’ for almost 2 hours already in four weeks and at this point, I just don’t think you can close my account Moneyou. Show me some service!

Whoa… 5:30 AM already? My mind was hazy whilst Suna and I ate a quick bite before driving the 70km back from my parents to our apartment in Nieuw-Vennep. Our voices sounded hollow in the empty apartment – sold off most of it in the previous months. The moving van arrived, and work went swiftly. Had to walk down to the Albert heijn downstairs for a tray of their complementary coffee at 8 am. Thanks Albert Heijn! The crew packed the boxes, we dropped the key off and were on the move.

At Schiphol we found a bus which was campaigning our new destination: Chengdu! Famous for Panda’s KLM now offers direct flights with it’s new dreamliner planes. After living in China until 2012, we kept returning (2013 and 2014) for holiday to meet up with friends. But todays trip to the P.R.C. isn’t a holiday; we moved back! Currently residing in a hotel and exploring the city tomorrow to find a place to live.

Yours truly has quit his job at Sanoma and has his last working day today.

It was a difficult decision; Sanoma has been my rescue back in 2012, hiring me straight after the crash-and-burn of my Chinese startup. Starting in the fancy Amsterdam office I felt proud finally working on ‘major league‘ websites with a shiny new Apple laptop. As architect the door was open everywhere and I learned a lot about performance based web business. Particularly about MVP’s and making decisions based on traffic instead of assumptions.

Later my work moved to the city of Culemborg when I became IT development manager at Kieskeurig.nl (a price comparison site owned by Sanoma) where I established a new development team and we developed a brand new site. I was part of the strategic board and I got my first lease car ever! When Kieskeurig’s office relocated to Hoofddorp, my family moved along. However, As things at Kieskeurig.nl were pretty much setup I moved departments to Kids & Teens.

Ah, Sanoma. Lot’s of great memories with it’s infamous office parties, company outings and investments in their employees but the publishing company does struggle with reclining ad-sales and orders. The 500 colleagues being let go back in 2013 signalled the publisher’s change of course.

As IT manager Kids & Teens I became part of a game development team building a game strategically aimed at countering the stagnating income from print. After the game was launched and put in maintenance we developed various other websites related to the kids and Disney realm. But things cannot last forever, I’m leaving. This week my colleagues set-up a goodbye drink and we went for Korean Barbecue in Amsterdam! I’ll be missing all of you, keep in touch!

As I’ve got a new opportunity I’m moving on. I have a double feeling because Sanoma feels like home (little village) to me now. As it’s my last working day I’m handing in my laptop symbolising the end of my work here. I’ll enjoy a week of free time and then prepare our flight back to China for our next chapter!

Staying in Belgium for a few days. We found a nice French style cottage surrounded with vast forests on rolling hills and alternating fields full of mooing Belgium cows.

It’s the perfect scenery for some outdoor activities and off-line time with the family. Nature is the number one toy for kids, just a simple puddle (yes it’s been raining a lot) provides endless pleasure, not to mention the swing in the backyard of our rental place. Once we get bored with all this nature we’ll probably head out the neighboring country of Luxembourg to explore this particular city.

We visited the keukenhof yesterday, one of the world’s largest flower gardens. The garden is based on a 30 minute bikeride from our house. Even though spring is just beginning, there were quite some flowers out already.

My daughter Mia is walking since a few months and she loved racing over all the paths, neglecting (but kindly being averted by) anyone in her way.

After more than a year I still feel that working at Donaldduck is special. As the brand is well known, it’s read by generations as it’s introduced in 1952! An immediate success, inspired by the post-war success seen in Scandinavia. At first stories were simply translated, later Dutch covers were introduced until finally, full stories (1954) produced in the Netherlands; still heavily influenced by original content was introduced.

Considering it’s historic background, the magazine is relevant and prominent as ever, with Dutch made content made by Jos Beekman, Joan Lommen, Bas Schuddeboom, Ferdi Felderhof, Jim van der Weele, Lotte Roep and Esther Holtkamp, Wilma van den Bosch and Michel Nadorp (and many others). Editor in chief Dimitri Heikamp introduced a digital strategy, with the magazine as a backbone. For instance, Twitter saw it’s 43 characters introduced in 2010; a success with Donald duck leading with 173k followers. Larger digital projects such as a soft-type course called ducktypen.nl and a 3D educational game called duckworld.com followed suit. Right now we are preparing to launch the new Donaldduck.nl website. (more info soon) Whilst many think we sourced these titles from abroad, they were actually made as part of the editorial team of the DonaldDuck magazine. (With a small development team and product owners) The title allows also allows some educational cooperation with other brands, such as the van Gogh museum and ‘Nederland Schoon’ (education about throwing trash for kids).

It’s fun to work close to the magazine editors. They work hard with over 500 deadlines per year! In early 2015 my face appeared in the magazine. I have also been asked to review a sketch of a story. Stoked, I spent the better part of new years reading it through. That story was published just last week and my comments were in! Just spotted the magazine in the supermarket so it went full loop. Nice to see the responses at twitter, interesting to see how the process from story to magazine takes place.

Another year has past; Mia became one year old, we moved to a different place and my third year at Sanoma (Finnish company) was a turbulent one. Turbulent because top management changed, collegues leaving/let go on all sides as the SAA1V:FH stock is declining for five years now. Even-tough the worries, I was privileged to do (and finish!) three exciting new titles; of which a 3D game (PC), build and launched a fashion site, and build the new donaldduck.nl (To be released in Q1 2016). So yeah, I am playing games and reading comics at work, that still doesn’t get old!

Before packing up to celebrate the release and the start of a new year with family, I wanted to wish you all the best for the new year! Three large learning I gained in the past year:

1/3: Scrum isn’t everything – Which is cursing, because I am a ‘certified scrum master’; At the start of the year I took scrum literally as you can see at this (overly?) enthusiastic post. Introduced Scrum at the company but over time learned (forced, really as our PO left the building) to be flexible and focus on the end-result instead. I also feel scrum is turning to project manager jargon, as developers are sometimes forgotten to be included in the decisions. 2016 will be all about ‘lean’ development for our department, hope to get some new views on the matter.

2/3: Ditch the car – For sure the best idea I had this year was trading my lease-car for a bicycle as I started feeling silly sitting in trafficjams. Cycling 4k a year now and as a added plus enjoying daily outdoor time (lucky with the weather also). I also cycled up Mont Ventoux in France. The reasoning, no car is more money and less time in car = more spent with family. I get to have daily playtime with my daughter Mia and enjoying lovely prepared (Paleo/Korean) meals together with my wife.

3/3: Take a digital diet – I left Facebook for a week in 2013 and I liked it. In 2015 I took privacy and software liberty a step further. Learn more about crypto, (like putting this blog to HTTPS, serious password management) moved the household to open-source. (Debian over Mac OSX, in general: free over proprietary) Digital diet as social experiment, no more Skype, Facebook or Whatsapp; Upside: more time ‘in the now’ and with family; downside: Slowly losing contact with those friends at the other side of the globe. Do keep in touch, for now contact me at joop@joop.in and XMPP, considering the downside, liberty excites me.

Today we had one of those late warm summer days here in The Netherlands. Too good to stay inside! One of the great things of living in Haarlemmermeer is that the beach is reachable by bike. I cycled there before but Suna didn’t find the time yet. This morning we packed our lunch-bags and rode off together!

The road was easy and enjoyable passing the typical Dutch flower fields and then past the Kennemerland national park. This is one of the few national parks in the country and I am looking forward to visiting it again in the fall. We followed a road though dense trees ending in the sandy dunes. Halfway we spotted a deer walking by and there were some gliders landing in the open fields. Once arrived we parked the bikes and walked out to the sandy beach.

Mia yelled of excitement once we saw the sea. We picked a nice spot and we played for hours in the sand and with the water. She is also keen for dogs and saw a lot of them. She was so excited that she slept all the way back to our house.

I’m always excited for the beach. Going to the beach means excitement, good moods and good times. When I was young we would go to the beach about once a year during the hottest (and busiest) days of the year. Now we can just ride down, I’m hoping to spoil Mia with a lot of spontaneous visits like these in the future. It’s amazing to go out riding with the family, also to see Suna excel on her bike. Hoping for more of these tours in the near future!

However, my job happened to move to the headquarters in the ‘big’ city. Fine, I thought, I’ll drive. However, I then spent the better part of my week (12%) driving to my office and back. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks did cure the pain a bit, but it was a time waster.

I’m happy that my wife agreed to move closer to our office and last weekend we made the move! Now I’m enjoying short travel times and no more stress about traffic jams, life is good!